Vincenz Muller

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Vincenz Müller (1951)

Vincenz Müller (born November 5, 1894 in Aichach , Upper Bavaria , † May 12, 1961 in East Berlin ) was a German officer , lieutenant general of the Wehrmacht and the National People's Army of the GDR .

Life

Müller was born as the son of master tanner Ferdinand Müller and his wife Viktoria, b. Deuringer († 1922), born in Aichach ( Bavaria ). After graduating from high school at St. Michaels High School in the Benedictine Abbey of Metten, he began a career as a career officer in the pioneer group. He first entered the Bavarian army . He switched to the Württemberg army . The First World War, spent the 1914 Lieutenant appointed Müller after a serious injury in the Vosges . From June 1915 he moved to Constantinople with 250 subordinate soldiers of the German military mission in Turkey . After November 1915 he moved from Berlin to Baghdad. At the end of 1916 he fell ill with typhus and malaria and returned to the hospital in Ulm. After his recovery he volunteered in June 1917 as a teacher at the Pioneer Officer School in Caspali in the Ottoman Empire, where he became a tactics teacher. From the beginning of 1918 until the end of the war he fought on the Western Front.

After the end of the war he served as a platoon leader in the pioneer battalion in Ulm and with the military district command  V, Stuttgart . In 1923 he moved to the Reichswehr Ministry in Berlin, where he was one of Kurt von Schleicher's employees until 1933 . This position was followed by general staff training from 1926 to 1927 . In the same year he was promoted to major . Müller returned to the Reichswehr Ministry and served in the political department until 1931. After a brief interlude as a company commander in Pioneer Battalion 7 in Munich , he worked as an advisor to the commander of Military District III in Berlin.

He played his first role in German history: During the “ Preußenschlag ” on July 20, 1932, on the instructions of Minister Schleicher and Commander Rundstedt, he removed the Prussian government and arrested the police.

National Socialism and World War II

After Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor on January 30, 1933, Müller served from 1933 to 1935 as head of the development of the mobilization organs in the General Staff of Military District Command VII, Munich, where his supreme superior was General Wilhelm Adam , whom he already knew personally from the Ministry of Defense. Then he was head of the mobilization group in the Army General Staff until 1937 . After attending the Wehrmacht Academy , Müller served from 1938 to 1940 as the first general staff officer (Ia) of Army Group  2, Kassel . During this time he was promoted to colonel .

As early as 1939, Müller was one of the accomplices in a conspiracy surrounding Erwin von Witzleben and Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord , which had the goal of overthrowing Hitler and Göring to thwart further war plans. So he participated as a courier to the OKH , where he informed Colonel General Franz Halder about the situation and asked for assistance. He previously warned Colonel Hans Oster against hasty actions. The conspiracy plans were unsuccessful.

From 1940 to 1943 Müller was Chief of Staff in the 17th Army on the southern section of the Eastern Front. After his appointment as major general and a stay in the hospital , Müller , who was promoted to lieutenant general , served briefly in 1943 as commander of the 56th Infantry Division , then until June 1944 as commander of the "Corps Department D", which was created from the remains of his own and the 262nd Infantry Division . On June 4, 1944 he was with the leadership of the XII. Army Corps instructed. During the defeat of Army Group Center in the summer of 1944, Müller tried in vain as the commander of a combat group from parts of the 4th Army to avoid being encircled by the Red Army.

According to his own statements, on July 8, 1944, Müller rode to the Soviet side in a hopeless position, where he allowed himself to be captured and immediately arranged for an order he had written to lay down his arms to be dropped on his troops by leaflet. This saved the lives of numerous soldiers. Under the impression of a conversation with Soviet Lieutenant General Lew Mechlis , which he had had the day after his capture, Müller decided to take an active stand against Hitler. Müller's speed in changing sides aroused astonishment among German prisoners and emigrants. He is said to have volunteered for the foam ass at the head of 50,000 German prisoners through Moscow on July 17, 1944, the pictures of which were immediately circulated around the world. Müller joined the NKFD and the BDO and graduated from the Antifa school in Krasnogorsk . Müller developed a closer relationship with the NKVD employee Wolf Stern , who in turn advocated Müller's return to Germany later.

Post-war period and GDR

Vincenz Müller (2nd from left) at a reception by Wilhelm Pieck (1957)

After his release from Soviet captivity , Müller joined the NDPD . From 1949 to 1952 he was the first deputy chairman of this party and vice-president of the People's Chamber .

From 1949 he headed the military development of the GDR as chief inspector of the People's Police and later as one of the deputy ministers of the interior . The Ministry for State Security (MfS) monitored Müller from October 1952 through his personal secretary, Captain Heinz Sperling, whom it also signed in 1958 as a secret informant (GI). In 1953 Müller was promoted to Lieutenant General and appointed Chief of Staff of the Barracked People's Police (KVP) . When it was converted into the National People's Army (NVA), he moved in 1956 as chief of the NVA's main staff to the Ministry of National Defense and at the same time became deputy to the then Interior Minister and later Defense Minister Willi Stoph . Müller was thus the highest of the few former officers of the Wehrmacht in the GDR armed forces (compared to the Bundeswehr).

All western intelligence services were interested in him and former comrades visited him in 1952 in East Berlin, also on behalf of the " Organization Gehlen ". Through contacts he had with old comrades - especially in Bavaria - he met the then Federal Finance Minister Fritz Schäffer ( CSU ) in East Berlin in 1955 and 1956 on behalf of the GDR government and held talks about the chances of a German-German understanding Aim of a confederation . Müller indicated an imminent overthrow of Ulbricht and the possibility of a reunified Germany, which, however, should be as neutral as Austria.

By resolution of the Politburo of the SED on February 15, 1957, almost all former Wehrmacht officers were gradually dismissed from the NVA and retired by the end of the 1950s, including Müller in February 1958. This was reported in the German press as early as March 1958, and it was also stated that Müller had been suspended from duty in December 1957. It was also said that GDR Defense Minister Stoph had accused him of opposing resolutions by the SED Central Committee regarding the SED's leading role in the People's Army. In September 1958 it was officially announced that Müller had been retired at his own request because of a serious heart disease.

On May 12, 1961 Müller committed by jumping from the balcony of his house in Berlin- Schmöckwitz suicide . Shortly afterwards , Müller's son and daughter-in-law fled to the West. The GDR reporting kept silent about the suicide. The author Heinz Sperling wrote in 1997 in his contribution to the New German Biography of Vincenz Müller about the merely "probable suicide". Against better judgment, the former GI Heinz Sperling spread the version of possible accidental death to television journalists in 1998.

Awards

Autobiographical

  • I found the true fatherland. Edited by Klaus Mammach, Deutscher Militärverlag, Berlin 1963.

literature

Web links

Commons : Vincenz Müller  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Extract from the German casualty lists (Württ. 43) of October 27, 1914, p. 1345 - Ensign, Pionier-Battalion No. 13, 4th Company
  2. ↑ as it turned out later, the marching order was made out to another person with the same name
  3. ↑ Peter Joachim Lapp: General with Hitler and Ulbricht: Vincenz Müller - a German career. Pp. 19–22 ( online )
  4. ↑ Hans Ehlert, Armin Wagner (ed.): Comrade General! The GDR military elite in biographical sketches. P. 127 ( online )
  5. ↑ Hans Ehlert, Armin Wagner (ed.): Comrade General! The GDR military elite in biographical sketches. P. 127 ( online )
  6. ^ Lapp: General with Hitler and Ulbricht. Pp. 41-43.
  7. ↑ Hans Ehlert, Armin Wagner: Comrade General! The GDR military elite in biographical sketches. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2003.
  8. ↑ Lapp (lit.), p. 139 f.
  9. ↑ Lapp (Lit.), pp. 141-143
  10. ↑ Soviet propaganda film Guarded march of the German prisoners of war through Moscow. Vincenz Müller appears from minute 1.50 with the name of the command and the information that he had ordered the fighting to stop on July 8th.
  11. ↑ Lapp (lit.), p. 248 f.
  12. ↑ Lapp (lit.), p. 187 f. Sperling (* 1923) retired from active service in 1958 with his superior Müller in the rank of lieutenant colonel, worked as a military historian in Potsdam and later published in the military publishing house of the German Democratic Republic .
  13. ↑ General with Hitler and Ulbricht. Vincenz Müller - a German career. 3.sat.de, accessed on 7 Sep. 2010.
  14. ↑ Jan von Flocken , Michael F. Scholz: Ernst Wollweber. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1994, p. 197.
  15. ↑ Hans Ehlert, Armin Wagner: Comrade General! The GDR military elite in biographical sketches. Ch Links Verlag, Berlin 2003.
  16. ↑ http://www.3sat.de/page/?source=/ard/sendung/69885/index.html
  17. ↑ On Müller's death, see Lapp (Lit.), p. 241 ff.
  18. ↑ Heinz Sperling:  Müller, Vincenz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , p. 479 f. ( Digitized version ).
  19. ↑ Lapp (Lit.), p. 242.
  20. ↑ a b c d e f Ranking list of the German Imperial Army. Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Berlin 1930, p. 145.
  21. ↑ Lapp, Berlin 2003, p. 130.
  22. ↑ Lapp, Berlin 2003, p. 246.
personal data
SURNAME Müller, Vincenz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German military and politicians (NDPD), MdV
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Aichach , Upper Bavaria
DATE OF DEATH May 12, 1961
Place of death Berlin